Cannot decide on a laptop for Uni/ Gaming

[Thomas Fisher]

Hello, First time posting on the Pcspecialist forums however I have purchased from Pcspecialist before (nearly 4 years i bought my computer which is still running very well and playing all the latest games ect). I cannot decide between the 17.3" Vortex III, The 17.3" SkyFire II or The 15.6" Vortex III the Vortex and Skyfire end up very close in price after configured, I do prefer the look of the vortex but I am unsure on which case would provide the best cooling as i will be using the laptop for long periods of time due to using it as a desktop replacement. I was also thinking of possibly getting the The 15.6" Vortex III instead of the 17.3" as it would be easier to carry around and more compact, how ever would it be really advisable to game ect on a 15.6"?

I will be using the laptop for Uni where I will be doing Games development using UDK and some 3D modelling like Maya ect, i will also be using the laptop to game on as I usually spend a lot of time on my desktop playing games like Battlefield 3, Starcraft2 and world of warcraft. I also need this laptop to be future proof, for at least the next 3 years as i will be spending 3 years at uni and I don't want to have to replace the laptop before then.

My budget is around £1000 and the basic set-up i have been thinking of is:

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
16GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (4 x 4GB)

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670M - 1.5GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
128GB KINGSTON V200 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (300MB/R, 190MB/W) (Special Offer)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)

This is the same across all 3 laptops ( on vortex 17.32 it comes to £1062)

I also cannot decide if i should upgrade the processor to Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3720QM (2.60GHz) 6MB but this adds an extra £90 so i decided to lower the RAM to 8GB Which lowers the price to £1,116.00 which is a little over my budget (but not something i couldn't afford) Also is the 128GB SSD really worth buying? ( all i would have on it is my OS/bf3/wow/sc2 and use a second 1Tb HDD to store data ) I also cannot decide on what graphics card to go for as the Nividia GTX 670 and 675 are both old tech and the AMD 7970 is rather nice but this also increases the price quite a bit and i ma unsure if it is worth it.

Can anyone give me some advice on what to purchase and also any details on the cooling of the different laptops?

 

[tom6561]

From what I know, you won't see any performance gains from upgrading the processor above the i7-3610QM. The SSD is definitely worth it if you can fit it in your budget. I'm going to go ahead and recommend the Skyfire II (possibly biased a lot by the fact that I have one). The cooling is provided by two fans in the back left corner as far as I'm aware. This corner gets very hot when gaming, but the rest of the laptop is still cool so it can be used on your lap. I've never had overheating problems, and I've used it on a bed too and no problems there. It can get very noisy when the fans get up to nearly full speed though.

 

[Thomas Fisher]

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3720QM (2.60GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card
AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
128GB KINGSTON V200 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (300MB/R, 190MB/W) (Special Offer)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)

Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)

Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft

This is the new spec i am currently looking at, I have added the gold warranty and dead pixel guarantee, i also lowered the RAM from 16GB to 8GB as i can upgrade this easily at a later date, i also changed the GPU to a 7970m and the processor to a 3720

current price is now £1,315, 315£ over the price i wanted but ow well

What do you guys think of the current spec? is there anyway i could save money at all or?

 

[tom6561]

From what I've heard there have been problems with the 7970M, I'd probably avoid it if I were you, so either drop back to the 675M or pay more for the 680M. You could most likely drop the processor down to the i7-3610QM with no problems. Personally I wouldn't get the dead pixel guarantee, but that's up to you really. Final thing; are you just having the one SSD or getting a secondary HDD as well for storage?

 

[Thomas Fisher]

From what I've heard there have been problems with the 7970M, I'd probably avoid it if I were you, so either drop back to the 675M or pay more for the 680M. You could most likely drop the processor down to the i7-3610QM with no problems. Personally I wouldn't get the dead pixel guarantee, but that's up to you really. Final thing; are you just having the one SSD or getting a secondary HDD as well for storage?

The problem with 680 is that its an extra £161 and I only originally wanted to spend £1000 to begin with and yes ill currently be using my 1TB external until I have the money to buy another HDD to add to the laptop i was thinking of dropping to the 3610 but the 0.3Ghz increase would possibly be worth it 1-2 years later, but yah ill have a look at benchmarks and see if the added 0.3Ghz is worth paying for. Also dropping to a 375M which is old tech is something i am weary of doing, as even know the 7970M has a lot of driver issues it still seems to perform better.

 

[marhask]

The problem with 680 is that its an extra £161 and I only originally wanted to spend £1000 to begin with and yes ill currently be using my 1TB external until I have the money to buy another HDD to add to the laptop i was thinking of dropping to the 3610 but the 0.3Ghz increase would possibly be worth it 1-2 years later, but yah ill have a look at benchmarks and see if the added 0.3Ghz is worth paying for. Also dropping to a 375M which is old tech is something i am weary of doing, as even know the 7970M has a lot of driver issues it still seems to perform better.

Dont even bother buying the 7970m. its a peace of thrash when combined with enduro and it bascily cant let you play games the way thay want. Either go with 675 which in realyty will give you better perfmance or just try to get a few pounds more and get the 680m which is twice as fast as the 675. If the 7970m wouldn't be crippled by enduro, or amd would come up with a fix it would be on par with 680m. So far theres been only statment from amd that they are invastigating enduro issues but no news if there will be a fix ever.. I waited lond time for a driver fix-almost four months and its just so frustrating playing something in the card. Im considering RMA'ing it or swamping it for gtx 680m even thought its a bit expencier but deffinitelly worth the extra cash..

 

[Thomas Fisher]

Dont even bother buying the 7970m. its a peace of thrash when combined with enduro and it bascily cant let you play games the way thay want. Either go with 675 which in realyty will give you better perfmance or just try to get a few pounds more and get the 680m which is twice as fast as the 675. If the 7970m wouldn't be crippled by enduro, or amd would come up with a fix it would be on par with 680m. So far theres been only statment from amd that they are invastigating enduro issues but no news if there will be a fix ever.. I waited lond time for a driver fix-almost four months and its just so frustrating playing something in the card. Im considering RMA'ing it or swamping it for gtx 680m even thought its a bit expencier but deffinitelly worth the extra cash..

Yah i have been looking into the issue and seen that Clevo users seem to be the most affected as they are unable to disable Enduro ( Alianware users are able to disable it so that it doesn't affect them), what i dont get if this is the case and the graphic card still doesn't perform as it is meant to why does AMD/Clevo ect still make and use the card?

Also what kind of issues do you have?

I just dont know if i can afford the extra £161 for the GTx 680 =( dam nividia pricing